"Wherever we go, there seems to be only one business at hand--that of finding workable compromises between the sublimity of our ideas and the absurdity of the fact of us."
~ Annie Dillard, "An Expedition to the Pole"

03 July 2007

Newness

Bright and shiny things on the Internets:

Bud has revamped Chekhov's Mistress, and it not only looks good, but the new direction he's taken will help to broaden the scope of what litblogs can do.

My dear friend Treena has set up shop in her own little corner of cyberspace. She's tackled Annie Dillard's enigmatic Holy the Firm and Ezra Pound's ABC of Reading (and this in only her first two posts!). Another great litblog to keep an eye on.

“There are those who maintain that you can't demand anything of the reader. They say the reader knows nothing about art, and that if you are going to reach him, you have to be humble enough to descend to his level. This supposes that the aim of art is to teach, which it is not, or that to create anything which is simply a good-in-itself is a waste of time. Art never responds to the wish to make it democratic; it is not for everybody; it is only for those who are willing to undergo the effort needed to understand it. We hear a great deal about humility being required to lower oneself, but it requires an equal humility and a real love of the truth to raise oneself and by hard labor to acquire higher standards.” ~ Flannery O'Connor